I just watched My Neighbor Totoro and came out of the film with a rather uneasy feeling. This is pretty weird because I can watch plenty of films geared towards adults that show the horrors of the real world and get no reaction.

Children's films feel like alternate universes, because they only show a sanitized view of the world when in reality, life is far more vulgar and cynical.This leads me to thinking while watching the movie, does My Neighbor Totoro take place in a more innocent world than we do or is it supposed to take place in a reality exactly like our own, where everything terrible about real life happens off camera?

Do I sound insane? Probably.